Lázaro–the Mercedarian friar: master–servant relationship

Lázaro–the Mercedarian friar: master–servant relationship is a short-lived episode in which Lázaro’s next placement offers him his first pair of shoes but no lasting security. The friar’s restless movement beyond the convent and his secular preoccupations make the service difficult to endure; Lázaro leaves him after only a brief time, alluding to a further reason he will not name.

Background and Placement

The relationship begins after the poor squire abandons Lázaro and runs away, reversing the usual pattern in which servants leave their masters. Lázaro must seek a fourth master, and the women who had previously helped him recommend a Mercedarian friar whom they describe as a relative. The placement therefore arises from the same precarious chain of dependence that shapes Lázaro’s service: when one arrangement collapses, he must find another through informal recommendation.

The Friar’s Conduct

The friar is presented through his departures from convent routine. He is a great enemy of the choir and the meals in the convent, continually ready to go out, and devoted to secular affairs and visits. Lázaro remarks that he thinks the friar wore out more shoes than the rest of the convent put together. The detail makes the friar’s mobility the defining feature of the relationship: unlike a master whose household confines the servant, this one is repeatedly elsewhere, absorbed in business and visiting.

Service and Departure

The friar gives Lázaro the first shoes he has worn in his life, a concrete gift that briefly marks a change in his circumstances. They do not last even eight days. Lázaro, however, cannot endure the friar’s constant comings and goings any longer. He also refers to “qualche altra cosetta che non dirò” as an additional reason for leaving; the narrative signals something withheld but does not identify it, so the cause cannot be specified beyond Lázaro’s stated impatience and this deliberate silence.

Narrative Significance

The episode belongs to a succession of masters rather than developing into a durable bond: the friar is the fourth, and Lázaro’s service ends by his own departure. The work’s broader account describes its clerical figures in sharply negative terms and identifies anticlericalism as especially pronounced in the episode of Lázaro’s second master, the priest. The friar’s rejection of choir and convent meals in favor of secular affairs likewise sets religious office against worldly habits, while the narrative’s restraint about the “other little thing” leaves a small but pointed gap in Lázaro’s account.